Take The Leap
by jazzparky
Summary: After an incident that kill one of their friends, a small group of Jumpers decides to take revenge on the Paladins. -All OC, but references to canon Paladins. M for coarse language and implied adult situations.-
1. Prologue

"TAKE THE LEAP"

(Jumper Fan-Fiction)

PROLOGUE

The man was tired. Tired and bored. He had closed up his store for the day and was now on his way home. The New York subway system was packed with people, as it always was at this time of day. Despite the massive amount of commuters, it was still the fastest way home. Thousands of people doing the same thing everyday, it made him wonder if there was anyone in the damned city who wasn't stuck in some dead-end job. As he walked past he handed a dollar to the newsvendor and walked away with his paper. Someone died, someone was born, but no one really lived. This saddened him.

The man was too wrapped up in his own thoughts and was about to get on the train, when a young man running past knocked him down. The boy apologised, but didn't stop running to help the man up. The man stared after the boy, who was sprinting away into the crowd. As he stood up, the man noticed two men chasing the boy. A tall olive-skinned man and a blonde-haired woman, both in long silver trench coats were running after him. The woman was yelling to the crowd in a thick English accent.

"Stop him! Stop him!" She kept yelling as her companion pulled a metallic gun from his belt. The man held it up and aimed it. As the man watched, he couldn't help but notice two spikes protruding from the front of the weapon. The tall man fired and the spikes flew from the barrel of the gun, with a cable connecting them.

The boy, now well ahead, turned to see how far he was in front of the people chasing him. He turned just in time to see the spike-cable flying towards him. Right as it was about to hit him, the man watching thought the spikes would impale the boy. And in the split second before the two collided, the boy disappeared. There was soft _thud_ and the boy was gone, the cable spikes piercing the concrete pillar behind where the boy had been only moments before.

The two people chasing him slowed down. The tall man walked up to the pillar and removed the spikes, taking obvious care not to touch the cable. The man watched on as these two people quietly discussed the boy and walked off. A few other people in the crowd had noticed the events, but most had been too busy trying to get home on time. As the train pulled out the station, the man walked up to the pillar cautiously. He had seen it. He had seen the boy disappear. As he approached the pillar, he noticed a faint shimmer where the boy had been before he disappeared. It was almost invisible, but as the light hit it, the man could see it clearly. It looked vaguely like a crack in a mirror, but it just hung in the air. He reached out to touch it, and noticed that it was shrinking. No… not shrinking. It seemed to be healing, fixing itself.

He stared at it until it had totally disappeared, looking around to see if anyone else had noticed. Everyone he saw was immersed in their own thoughts, trying to get on the train.

The man could not believe what he had just witnessed.

"What the fuck…"


	2. Chapter 1

Tom had never had any problem cooking. He had cooked for himself many times. He had cooked for others as well. It seemed ironic that the one time he was trying to impress a girl with his kitchen skills, he had done nothing but struggle. It didn't help that he didn't have much of a kitchen to work with. In fact, he had no kitchen at all. Living in a semi-renovated cave did tend have its drawbacks.

Lana, his girlfriend, was on the other side of the room. She was waiting for him to walk over with a delicious plate of dessert for the both of them to share. Not for the first time that night, Tom wondered if he had bitten off more than he could chew. He had promised a restaurant-quality dessert, but he had ended up making something that resembled a very tasty sludge. Mentally slapping himself, he carefully picked up the plate and turned to walk over towards the young woman who awaited him.

Lana was gorgeous. Tall, black hair, and long legs. He had regularly suggested she take up modelling. She had declined such a suggestion, but he still enjoyed telling people he was dating a Russian supermodel.

She was a Jumper, like him. People who could teleport anywhere in the world. Very rare people, thanks to the Paladins. The two of them had been living together in a forgotten cave for the last 8 months. Smack in the centre of the Las Vegas desert, no Paladins had been able to find them.

As Tom walked slowly over to the couch, he made special care not to drop any or make a mess. Every step was carefully placed in front of the previous one.

"Almost there… Just two more steps…" Being as cautious as he was, he had made it almost to where Lana sat. With the bowls nearly on the makeshift coffee table (not so much a table as it was a large suitcase), Tom was feeling the first stages of what he could only define as success. Unfortunately, Tom didn't count on a surprise visit from one of his friends this late at night.

**_*Bang*_**

Shawn jumped into the room, still running, and collided with Tom. This sent both of them crashing to the floor, and the melted dessert went flying across the room. Tom and Shawn fell in a heap, and Lana sprung up to help. Shawn recovered quickly, climbing to his feet in a matter of seconds. Tom wasn't feeling quite so co-ordinated. Lana helped him regain his balance and giggled at him. She reached up and licked some of the melted dessert-stuff of Tom's cheek. Shawn pretended to gag.

"Stop that. It's just gross."He laughed at the two of them.

"Screw you, I will if I want" Tom smiled at Lana, then frowned at Shawn, "Besides, you're the one who spilt it. It was supposed to be romantic!"

"Ice-cream soup isn't romantic." Shawn laughed. "But I am sorry about that. I was supposed to end up at John's place, but I panicked and here was the first place I could think of."

"It's fine." Tom wiped the rest of the melted dessert off his face with his thumb. His tone wasn't sounding particularly forgiving, but he quickly shook his head and shrugged. "Now you have to stay and watch us kiss." He leaned in to kiss Lana, but she interrupted by speaking to Shawn. Her thick accent was, as always, very obvious.

"Vait, you panicked? Meaning… You–"

"Ran into a pair of Paladins, yes." Shawn finished for her.

_"Der'mo." _Lana still had the confusing habit of swearing in her native language, but luckily the two boys were semi-fluent in Russian.

"Shit indeed. Where'd they find you?" Tom was still sucking ice cream out of his shirt, but he was clearly worried.

"New York. Subway." Shawn paused. "The train station, not the sandwich shop."

"Ah."

**_*Bang* _**

A fair-haired boy appeared in the room, along with a small flurry of loose snow that had come through his jump scar.

_"Tã mã de zhè shi lêng! Yôurén dâkãile xuèxing jiarè qi!"_

"Uh, dude? We don't have a heater. We live in a cave." Tom stared at him, not bothering to reply in Chinese. He wasn't bad at chinese, but he wasn't great. In fact, apart from English and Russian, Tom didn't have enough faith in any of his languages to uphold a conversation with someone. Particularly if that someone was John Patrick, who's Australian drawl made communicating in english unpleasant enough, let alone one of the many languages John had a loose grip on.

"Yeah I know. No heater. Which means I'm going to freeze to death. Thank you."

Shawn scoffed. "John, You're not going to freeze to death. Man up."

"I was just in Antarctica. ANTARCTICA. Okay? It's fucking cold down there. It's REALLY fucking cold. No sunlight or anything…"

John continued to ramble pointlessly, switching to french halfway through some offhand comment about penguins. By the time he had returned to english, the other three had lost interest and were off doing their own things. Tom and Lana were sucking each other's faces (again), so John approached Shawn.

"You sent me a text. Paladins in New York. What happened?"

Shawn shook his head and smiled.

"Nothing I couldn't handle. Obviously." He shrugged "And it wasn't anything we haven't handled before."

John stared at him, encouraging him to be more specific. Shawn rolled his eyes.

"Senõr Grande. And… Her."

"Ah. _Her_." Tom and Lana stopped making out at the mention of the word. John chewed on his thumb before speaking again.

"Did you get the thing though? Obviously they didn't catch you, but did you actually get what we needed? Did you get the thing?"

Shawn pulled a single piece of paper from his pocket, folded into quarters. He refrained from commenting on John's vague use of the term 'thing', but rolled his eyes once more for good measure.

Shawn unfolded the paper and started reading.

"Informant sheet for Santiago Saldõr and Stephanie Morran." Across the room, Tom frowned at the mention. Shawn noticed, but kept reading.

"Douglas Everton, American, still active. James Dickson, English… oh, dead. Shame that, he was a nice guy… Dum de dum de dum… Ryan O'Connor… Shawn Bar– hey, there's me… Do de do de dum… Ah! Here we are. Thomas Morran, Nationality is Irish and, drum roll please…"

John provided a makeshift drum roll by drumming on his legs. Shawn paused.

"… Dead."

A loud cheer went up from John, Lana and Shawn. Tom didn't yell, but he couldn't help but smile.

His own sister was a Paladin. She knew very well that he was not dead, but the fact that the paper said otherwise meant that she was still looking after him. He saw her very rarely, and one of them usually had to punch the other to maintain their cover, but they still enjoyed catching up. Reading his own name in the list of dead jumpers meant that Steph had lied in order to give him a better chance of survival. But if Roland found out that he'd been fooled, Steph would be in big trouble…

Lana distracted Tom from his thoughts with a kiss on the cheek. Tom smiled. Shawn interrupted the festivities by pointing out that the rest of them were still known and wanted by the paladins.

"But who does that surprise?" John looked at Tom. "Agent Bale has tried to kill me so many times I think he'd be genuinely sad if he ever succeeded."

"John, no-one would be sad if Bale succeeded in killing you. Sorry."

John, clutching his chest, staggered towards Tom.

"Oh… my ego… oh, Tom… how could you?" John fell over and pretended to die.

There was a pause. No one spoke until Shawn kicked John lightly in the ribs, making him squirm.

"See? You died. No one cares. Point proven"

John rolled over on the floor and glared at Shawn.

_"Embrassez mon cul."_

_"Mordez-moi."_

John poked his tongue out at Shawn, to which Shawn responded by trying to kick him hard in the ribs.

**_*Bang* _**

"Ow! Fuck!"

John had jumped away far enough to avoid getting hit, but had landed underneath the table, slamming his head against the underside as he tried to get up. The other three burst out laughing. John stood up slowly and rubbed his forehead.

"My apologies ladies and gentlemen, but I'm afraid I'll take that as my queue to leave." He paused, clearly trying to work out how bad the lump on his head was. "I have to… I have to…"

"Go to a hospital?"

"Shut up. No, I have to take Daniel to the beach tomorrow. And I don't want to be Mister Egghead when that happens. So for tonight, I bid you all _adieu_."

"Later dude."

"Bye."

"Proshchaî imbir' chelovek."

John took a lavish bow, much a magician, and jumped.

**_*Bang*_**

Shawn looked around the room. His view came to rest on Tom and Lana, curled up together on the couch in each other's arms. Tom made a shoo-ing motion with his hands, and Shawn flipped him the bird.

"Sod this. I have better places to be anyway."

**_*Bang*_**

There was a moment of silence. Then Lana turned to Tom, grinning, and spoke.

_"Yebat' moi mozgi."_

"Uh… All I got from that was 'Me' and 'Fuck'. In English please?" Tom procured an apologetic smile and Lana leaned over to whisper in his ear. He paused.

"Yes please."

And with that, Tom turned the light off and proceeded to follow her to the bed.


	3. Chapter 2

It was dark in Tokyo, but not late. The square was full of people, all bustling to get somewhere, or meet people. Kenji Koide was walking through the city on his way to the bar. He had agreed to meet his friends at 7, but he had run himself a few minutes late. As he walked past a group of giggling schoolgirls, he wondered if his friends had even noticed he was late. He looked down at his watch and muttered to himself. The moment he looked up, he received quite a shock.

**_*Bang*_**

"Shinseina tawagoto!" _Holy shit! _

A Caucasian boy with dark hair materialised in front of Kenji. Both Kenji and the boy looked at each other for a minute. The boy looked about 20, maybe younger. Kenji was speechless.

"A, Kuso, moshiwake arimasen. Watashi wa hito o mae de sore o okonau koto ni natte inai yo…" _Oh, shit, sorry. I'm not supposed to do that in front of people._

Kenji was surprised by the boy's proficiency with Japanese. The boy spoke again.

"Tan'ni okoranakatta koto furi o suru. Sayonara!" _Just pretend that didn't happen. Bye!_

"Sayonara…" Kenji waves the boy goodbye as he walked off into the city. Kenji turned around and decided to take the boy's advice. He had literally appeared out of no-where. Teleported. No one would believe him anyway. He made a mental note to quit drinking so much.

...

As Shawn walked away from the surprised Japanese man, he laughed, and then mentally scolded himself. There could have been Paladins in the square. There were hundreds of people. He wouldn't have been surprised if there were. Ever since the incident in Venice, he had promised to make himself more aware of his surroundings. He still had two parallel scars on his chest to remind him. The doctor's had said that he always would.

"Never going back to Venice. Never ever ever." Shawn muttered to himself.

He arrived at the apartment building he was looking for. Pressing the buzzer, Shawn waited for a reply. The intercom rang once. Twice. Three times…

_"Soko Ni wa daredesu ka?" _

Shawn chuckled.

"The most attractive man in the world." Shawn spoke into the intercom.

"Oh, you." She said flatly.

"No need to sound so disappointed, Luce."

There was a pause. Shawn could almost hear the girl on the other end thinking. Then she spoke again.

"If I say no, you'll probably just come up here anyway right?"

"Yes. Very probably."

Another pause. Then the gate unlocked. Shawn opened the gate and closed it, locking it again. He took a deep breath.

**_*Bang*_**

Various papers were tossed into the air from the force of his jump. The girl squealed at his sudden appearance, but quickly regained her composure. Her apartment was small, but homely. The girl crossed her arms and looked at Shawn intently.

"I hope you realise that the door works fine. And the stairs. "

"Doors are for people with no imagination." Shawn smiled.

"No, doors are for people who can't teleport and so have to walk everywhere." She glared at him and then grinned. Shawn chuckled and she leapt forward and hugged him tight. Possibly too tight.

"Lucy? Can you let me go? I do need to breathe." Shawn asked with short breath.

Lucy squeezed again and then let him go.

"Fine, but let that be a lesson for you. Next time you scare the shit out of me by jumping into my apartment, I'll crush you."

"Sounds fair. Although before it was your place it belonged to me, so…" Shawn scratched his hair and stood back. There was an awkward silence. He hadn't seen Lucy since Venice. He had broken things off to protect her from getting hurt or killed, but there was still something between them. Possible there always would be.

Shawn spoke again.

"How's Tokyo? You seem to have adjusted quite well." Shawn tried to smile, but it just made him seem more awkward.

"Yeah, it's… yeah it's good. Nice people, nice places. Its nice."

Both of them were clearly avoiding the one topic they both wanted to talk about. But neither wanted to be the first person to say it. Instead, Lucy asked:

"Why are you here? I'm glad to see you, I always am. But you just showed up here, and I have no idea why." Lucy stared at him. Shawn stared back, then his vision dropped. He stared at his shoes.

"Well?" Lucy urged. Shawn looked at her again. Then, without warning, he leaned in and kissed her. She kissed back. And just as suddenly, it was over. They stared at each other again and they both smiled.

"Does this mean you want me back? Lucy stared straight into his eyes. Shawn made a mental note that whilst beautiful, she was scary when she did that.

"Yes. It does." Shawn gave a cheesy smile and continued. "Let's celebrate, where would you like to go for dinner?"

Lucy thought for a minute.

"I'm in the mood for Indian food tonight."

"Fantastic. There's only one place to get good Indian food."

"Uh… India?"

Shawn laughed loudly.

"London, my dear. The best Indian food comes from London." He announced proudly.

"The irony." Lucy rolled her eyes and held Shawn's hand.

**_*Bang*_**


End file.
